Housewife
by SorainaSkye
Summary: There is a flow in the earth. Izumi POV.


FMA Ladyfest

Prompt: Izumi Curtis. I'd like to know about how she became an alchemist/ how she relates to other alchemists. I'd adore something where she knew Berthold Hawkeye and young Riza, but seriously anything about Izumi would be awesome.

Title: Housewife

Rating: K+

Mangaverse

Summary: There is a flow in the earth.

A/N: Ended up doing a bit of an introspective piece about her relating to other alchemists. All alchemists are scientists, but I don't think a lot of them truly appreciated some of the more philosophical aspects of it unless they had opened the Gate. Izumi, out of all of them, due in part to her personality and her loss, seemed to think the most about it. I think that would separate her a lot from other alchemists, and I also think it's a big part of why she never wanted to be a State Alchemist. Hope you like it!

Betaed by: TaIoRaFoReVeR523

* * *

_There is a flow in the earth._

Life bleeds into death, and death into life.

Like the circles they drew with chalk (_so different from the scribblings of children, and yet…_) it was an endless cycle. Without death, there could be no life.

_One is all; all is one. _

Izumi does not know the normal regiments for teaching alchemists. There are few schools of alchemy, and most knowledge is obtained through private teachers and private study. She's not ultimately surprised, then, that most alchemists she has met don't follow along with her thoughts. The science behind it is all the same, but there is something tangible missing from their theories and words.

She knows its because they haven't seen the _Truth._

She'd spouted the knowledge of the flow of the earth before she'd seen it, like all alchemists. Excitedly and proudly, she's shouted it and worn it around herself like a badge of honor.

When Truth smiled at her, she knew how foolish she had been.

When the Gate spat her back out, Izumi lay there for a while, blood and death surrounding her, staring at the ceiling. Her every cough sent spasms though her, and her mouth was sticky with the blood. Blindly, desperately, she reached for her dead child.

It was a little thing. Blackened, with skin like tar and bones miss-matched.

Before it crumbled, she saw it reach for her too.

Sig finally found her, held her to his chest and carried her to the hospital.

He does not ask her why she did it, because he knows. He doesn't understand alchemy (_and neither did I_, Izumi realized) but he knows what's in her heart, and he just takes her hands in his. They cry together.

After seeing the Gate, the entire world was opened up to her eyes.

Before, she had spoken of the flow of the earth, but never truly known it. Alchemists have a way of continuing to push beyond what is known and accepted, no matter the cost to themselves. She knew the cost now.

The world was different now. Her disgrace and mistake seemed to linger with everything she did. Izumi realized that before, words like all and one had been spoken without true understanding. Now that the Truth had been forced upon her, she could not ignore it.

She had done a terrible thing.

It took some time, but after a while her view on alchemists changed. For a time she had thought them blessed in ignorance (for their pride in their abilities, their sureness, their quest to further knowledge), but as the weeks passed she changed her mind. Alchemists, especially the ones with the military, were fools.

Izumi knew she was no different, of course, (in fact, due to her sin, she was worse). Still, now that she knew the Truth, it was hard to look at them and not be furious. They did not _understand_. They never would understand.

The military alchemists were the worst. _Be thou for the people._ Their motto was a lie.

The used the power they had without the slightest idea of the true nature of it. They did not use it to benefit others, but for their own selfish reasons. For more power, for praise and money, sex; all of it. The very thought of State Alchemists filled her with fury.

If that was what alchemists were, she wanted no part of it. She was not an alchemist. She was a housewife.

For a long time she did not ever use alchemy. The alchemists she knew had abused it (and so had she), so she refused to ever do it again. Her alchemy books were hidden away, chalk thrown out, and whenever someone tried to get her to fix things with alchemy, more often than not she slammed the door in their face.

But the world flows. Goes on. Eventually, she had to, too.

One morning she was on her way to the baker's, when a shout came to her. Whipping around, she'd seen a child dangling off of a broken trellis, high up by a window. Someone was calling for a ladder, but in that moment, the child's grip slipped, and he started to fall. He hadn't even been able to work up a good scream when Izumi clapped her hands together and pressed them to the ground. Immediately, the ground seemed to grow upward as a hand made out of the earth literally caught the boy in the air.

Everyone had turned to look at her (parents beside themselves in joy), and she came to a realization.

She knew the truth. It had cost her, but she had sinned and it was what she deserved. Still, she had power. Now that she knew the truth of it, she could use it like it was meant to be used. To help people. Not like those spineless, greedy, dogs of the military, no. She could help people with her alchemy, and in a way, maybe she could make up a little for her sin.

She'd always loved to travel, especially with Sig, but now there was a new reason for their vacations. Everywhere they went, if it was needed, Izumi would help people with alchemy. Some days she liked to think that it made the wrongs less, smoothed over her own hurts. That she made things better.

When people smiled at her, grateful, she believed it.

Becoming a little bit renown for her alchemy had its downsides of course. Whenever someone from the military saw her perform they always offered her a place with the dogs to get fed scraps of research and so on. Often, it took all of her effort to not beat them to a pulp, and usually her coughing up blood or the like was enough to scare them off.

The Elric brothers awakened something in her that she'd long tried to forget; the feeling of being a mother. Though her child had not lived, she had felt him grow, felt love and warmth and pride, and the Elrics inspired these feelings all over again.

Izumi hadn't wanted to teach them. They wanted to be alchemists, be like the men in the military, perhaps. They did not understand.

They had looked up at her, eyes full of hope, and something changed. She didn't know exactly what she saw, but after that she thought that maybe, just maybe, she could teach them about the truth of alchemy, without them having to suffer.

_One. All._

They brought things to her life that she hadn't even realized she was missing until they were there, filling her day with them. There was _brightness_, such a brightness, and there were days where she did not think of her own lost child, of her sin, so caught up in the bright boys.

They were eager and curious, stubborn, beyond intelligent, and more. Ed could be a brat, and Alphonse was too sweet for his own good. Every day she saw it in them; that unnamed quality that made her believe that they were different. That she could make things different for them, and that they would take that knowledge into the world and help others.

She should have seen the signs. Often, she thinks that was her biggest failure.

The world continues to flow.

There are times where she thinks (wishes?) that it would stop, if only for a moment, but it doesn't, and the next thing she knows years have gone by.

The bright boys return to her, broken, the truth gleaming in their eyes, and she does not admonish them. She can't. They committed their sin and must now suffer from it. It hurts, though. They were only boys. Just little boys.

It is a while before she realizes that she wasn't wrong about the look in their eyes. Its still there. The indefinable quality. It follows their every step; stronger, now that they have lost so much, and Izumi realizes what she has been seeing.

In the Elrics she saw how different they were from regular alchemists. A difference that she saw in her own eyes every time she looked in a mirror. Obtained only through loss.

Other alchemists hadn't experienced this, could never know it, but it was there in Ed and Al. As it was there in her.

The bitterness fades. The Elric brothers took their truth, the price for their sin, and turned it on its head. Found themselves- their bodies– again.

Izumi is more happy, more proud than she can describe. They were not so little boys anymore, and they had gotten their lives back.

It takes her some time to realize that she has done this too, in her own way. She would never have her own child, but she had her own bright boys, her husband, the sun, laughter and lightbugs, the stars, good food, and the future. It wouldn't last forever, but it was there for her, too.

_The world flows on._


End file.
